For the first time, at least 13 transgender persons will contest the general elections in Pakistan this year with two of them contesting for the National Assembly, a media report said.
Transgenders were included for the first time in the census, published in August. The survey identified only 10,418 transgender people out of a population of nearly 208 million in Pakistan.
The importance of the participation of the trangenders was discussed yesterday at a national consultation where their political inclusion and empowerment for social progress was highlighted, the Express Tribune reported.
The consultation was organised by All Pakistan Transgender Election Network (APTEN) in collaboration with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
The meeting was attended by all the potential candidates and representatives from their assigned constituencies, it said.
Of the 13 transgender candidates, two will contest for National Assembly and the rest for provincial assembly seats, the report ...

A US federal court ruled today in favor of a transgender teenager who fought for years to use the men's bathrooms at his high school in Virginia.
In February, President Donald Trump's administration overturned rules set by his predecessor Barack Obama requiring public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms and locker rooms matching the gender with which they identify, rather than the one on their birth certificate.
Following that decision, the US Supreme Court in March sent Gavin Grimm's case back to a lower court for reconsideration.
"I feel an incredible sense of relief," Grimm said in a statement after US District Judge Arenda Wright Allen denied the Gloucester County School Board's motion to dismiss the case and allowed it to go forward.
"I was determined not to give up because I didn't want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through," added Grimm, who graduated from high school last year and has been fighting the school board's ...

Major film studios featured nine fewer films with LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) characters in 2017 compared to the year before, according to an annual report by media-advocacy organization GLAAD.

With over 250 speakers, poets, musicians, artists and performers, the fifth edition of Kalinga literary festival will focus on 'just society'.
The three-day festival beginning on June 8 in Bhubaneswar, will explore concepts of equality, equity and humanity in literature.
The festival will witness innovative sessions on radio, poetry recitation, short story, lyrics and cinema by speakers like writer Amish Tripathi, politician-author Pavan Verma,
Urdu poet and lyricist Rahat Indori, writer Mridula Garg, entrepreneur-author Ravi Singh, and commentator and journalist Vinod Dua among others.
Discussions on issues ranging from youth to inclusion, transgender to equality, women to equity, and governance to justice will be held at the festival.
A dedicated poetry festival, 'Mystic Kalinga', an integral part of the event, will be organised to provide a platform for emerging talents and youth icons in poetry to meet the established ones and the legends.
Another dedicated platform, 'Kalinga Art .

A transgender, who lived as a male till attaining adulthood in 2012 and was now seeking to be identified as a female, was today asked by the Delhi High Court how could a change of name and gender be done retrospectively.
"How can your past be changed? ... How can the changes be brought about retrospectively," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shanker asked.
The court was referring to the transgender's plea seeking change of name and gender in the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Delhi University (DU) records.
The petition has alleged that the criteria laid down by the various authorities for changing of name and gender were "arbitrary and unreasonable".
It pointed out that while the university norms say that for change of name and gender, it has to be first altered in the records of the CBSE, the guidelines of the Board say that such a request for changes in its records would be entertained only if it is made before the publication of ...

Nahal smokes yet another cigarette on her mother's balcony overlooking Tehran, one of the few peaceful places the 19-year-old transgender woman has in Iran, where her identity can bring harassment and prying, judging eyes on the street.
Nahal recalled how she had hardly started high school before being forced to leave over her classmates' insistence she dress as a man. Her manicured fingernails, painted pink, brushed away her long brown hair as she looked through old photographs of her childhood, recounting how even her own family has struggled to accept her.
"I no longer see my relatives," she said. "Maybe I'm a sign that if your own children will have a similar problem later, you can accept it."
It shouldn't be like this for Nahal in the Islamic Republic, which - perhaps to the surprise of those abroad - has perhaps the most open mindset in the Middle East toward transgender people.
The Shiite theocracy's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a religious decree, or fatwa, 30 .

As many as 12 people, including six police officers, were injured in a suicide explosion targeting a Frontier Corps vehicle in Nowshera city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province on Thursday.According to District Police Officer Shahzad Nadeem Bukhari, a suicide bomber, who was travelling on a motorcycle targeted a vehicle of the security forces at Kutchehry Chowk in the city. He also confirmed the figures of those who were injured in the attack, The Dawn reported.The security personnel were travelling to Peshawar from Rawalpindi.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, Shaukat Yousafzai's spokesperson, while confirming the blast as a suicide attack said that the bomb contained five kilograms of explosive material.The injured have been rushed to the District Headquarters Hospital Nowshera and Combined Military Hospital for medical treatment.The recent suicide explosion comes after a security personnel was killed and six people, including two policemen, were injured after a remote-controlled ...

The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Centre seeking its reply on a plea by a group of 20 former and current students of the prestigious IITs challenging section 377 of the IPC, which criminalises unnatural sex between two consenting adults of the same gender.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, while seeking response from the government, ordered tagging of the plea with other similar petitions which have already been referred by the top court to a five-judge constitution bench on January 8.
The 20 IITians, including scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs and researchers of different age groups, who all are Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgenders (LGBT), have claimed that criminalisation of sexual orientation has resulted in a "sense of shame, loss of self-esteem and stigma".
Their plea was filed on behalf of LGBT alumni association of the IITs, which claims to have over 350 members. Among the petitioners, the youngest one is a ...

Several cities in Pakistan's Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces were today plunged into darkness after a major power outage occurred due to a technical fault in one of the main transmission lines, leaving millions of people without electricity in the scorching summer heat.
The breakdown occurred due to tripping of Muzaffargarh-Guddu main transmission line. Four nuclear power plants at Chashma had also tripped due to the tripping of the main transmission line.
"The main 500 KV transmission line tripped due to unknown reason, leaving the two provinces with electricity, said Power Division spokesman Zafaryab Khan.
Minister for Power Awais Khan Leghari said the sudden breakdown resulted in the tripping of several power generation plants in a cascading effect.
"But repair work was started soon after the incident and power was being slowly restored to the affected areas," he said.
Leghari promised a probe into the causes of the breakdown, which has caused huge embarrassment for the ...

Rome, May 15 (IANS/AKI) Deputy lower house of parliament speaker Maria Rosaria Carfagna was on Wednesday due to meet members of Italy's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex community in Rome, the parliament stated.

Twenty former and current students of prestigious IITs have moved the Supreme Court challenging section 377 of the IPC which criminalises unnatural carnal sex between two consenting adults of the same gender.
The 20 IITians, including scientists, teachers, entrepreneurs and researchers of different age groups and all Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual and Transgenders (LGBT), have claimed that criminalisation of sexual orientation has resulted in a "sense of shame, loss of self-esteem and stigma".
The plea is likely to be taken up by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which has already referred to a five-judge constitution bench several petitions filed by eminent citizens and NGO 'Naaz Foundation' challenging the 2013 apex court verdict which had re-criminalised gay sex between consenting adults.
The present petition has been filed on behalf of LGBT alumni association of the IITs, which claims to have over 350 members. Among the petitioners, the youngest one is a 19-year-old student of ..

It has been billed as a state with 100 per cent literacy. But people there know they had an unfinished task. Having actually reached an overall literacy rate of 93.94 per cent, Kerala has now embarked on a programme to bridge the small gap in its achievements by training illiterates among tribals, scheduled castes, transgenders and the migrant labour communities.